A ladder connects Woodland Hills neighbors

There’s a poignant story attached to the old, wooden ladder leaning up against the ivy-covered, cinder-block wall in Josie Wort’s backyard.

A story of a time in the 1960s when neighbors exchanged house keys and their kids played together outside after dark without thinking twice. When trusting moms made them bologna sandwiches for lunch without wondering why Wonder Bread never got stale.

Josie and her husband, John, had arrived in New York from England on the Queen Mary a few years earlier in 1963, moved west, and bought a little fixer upper on Dumetz Road in Woodland Hills for $24,000.

John landed a job as a lunch waiter at the famous Brown Derby, and later as a night waiter at Chasen’s where he served the stars while his wife picked up a few bucks as a hairdresser who made house calls.

Life was good and about to get a lot friendlier.

Margie Wilson was the first to welcome Josie to the neighborhood. She lived around the corner on Ibanez Avenue, but their backyards shared a common wall so Marge decided it made more sense for the new friends to simply climb over to visit.

So she put up a ladder on her side, and Josie put up a ladder up on her side, and another neighbor, Millie Palmquist, put one up on her side, too.

Sure they could have walked around the corner to see each other, but why waste the time? Besides, it was safer traveling at night by ladder than taking the street.

It didn’t take much time before their husbands were climbing those ladders, too. On weekends the Wilsons and Palmquists hosted neighborhood potlucks, and during the summer the Worts — with the only swimming pool on the block — hosted pool parties.

During the weeknights, while John was at work at Chasen’s, Josie would take the ladder over to Millie or Marge’s home for a glass of wine and dinner. Reservations were never required. The women had grown so close, they just popped in.

After Millie’s husband, Gordie, died in 1979 and the Wilsons moved up north the following year to be near their son (they are both deceased now), Millie and Josie became even closer.

“Josie would climb over the back fence with her hair-dresser basket and curl my aunt’s hair in the kitchen — the both of them talking and laughing for hours,” says Gary Palmquist, Millie’s nephew who moved from Washington, D.C., with his wife, Katie, in 2010 to help care for his aunt who was in failing health.

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“Josie and my aunt would have dinner together four or five times a week,” he says. “My aunt’s kitchen was part hair salon, wine bar and restaurant.”

The night Millie died last year, Josie climbed over the fence and had a chance to spend the last five minutes of her best friend’s life holding her hand. If it wasn’t for that ladder being there, Gary says, she never would have made it in time.

Gary and Katie bought Millie’s home, and are now keeping an eye on Josie like they promised Millie they would. They know she misses her best friend and all those days and nights they spent together laughing and carrying on in her kitchen/hair salon.

“Josie’s become a big part of our lives, too,” Gary said last Tuesday morning, watching his 80-year-old neighbor come over the backyard wall to see Rosie, Millie’s old dog, who was barking.

“She hears my voice,” Josie said. “She wants to play.”

How long will she be able to keep climbing that old ladder, she’s asked? As long as she physically can, Josie said.

“People don’t understand an 80-year-old woman climbing a ladder, but Millie and I did it almost every day for nearly 50 years,” Josie says.

“She wouldn’t want me to stop popping in for a visit now.”

Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Friday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.